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Haley, John O. --- "Lawyers in Magellan’s World" [2010] ELECD 425; in Hiscock, Mary; van Caenegem, William (eds), "The Internationalisation of Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2010)

Book Title: The Internationalisation of Law

Editor(s): Hiscock, Mary; van Caenegem, William

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781849801027

Section: Chapter 9

Section Title: Lawyers in Magellan’s World

Author(s): Haley, John O.

Number of pages: 10

Extract:

9. Lawyers in Magellan's world
John O. Haley*

MAGELLAN'S WORLD: IN THE BEGINNING

In 1519 Ferdinand Magellan, the Portuguese navigator in the service of
the Spanish Crown, set sail from Seville on a voyage with historic conse-
quences as the first known circumnavigation of the globe. He crossed the
Atlantic from Sierra Leone to Argentina, then through the straits that
today bear his name, across the Pacific, ultimately landing at Cebu in what
are today the Philippines in April 1521. A few weeks later he was killed
nearby.
Four decades later in 1565, the Spanish Crown added the Philippines
to its American empire. The new colony was incorporated into the
Viceroyalty of New Spain and governed from Mexico City. Manila, the
new capital city of the Philippines, soon became one of the world's great
entrepôts. The ensuing commercial relationship between Ming China
and the Hapsburg Empire in Europe via the Castilian Crown's American
empire had profound global consequences.
The story of the Manila galleons and Spain's semi-annual flotas or
convoys is well known. American silver, principally from the Petosi mines
in Peru (now Bolivia), was exchanged for Chinese gold at a rate that,
relative to the prevailing rate in Europe, made possible and profitable
the transport of silver first from Peru to Mexico then across the Pacific
to Manila and the return shipment of gold back across the Pacific again
to Mexico, to be unloaded on the Pacific coast, transported overland to
Veracruz, ...